We are doing so now, by choosing to take the suicides and mental health problems lockdowns will result in over the deaths the pandemic would cause without lockdown. I mean, I'm not opposed to the lockdowns generally, but you can't pretend we aren't making choices about who suffers.

Mostly we're choosing to take our chances on the unknown long-term consequences over the fairly well-understood risks we face now. The people who pay the cost will be different.

Yup, and I wish more people would recognize/admit this. The lockdown decisions may be the best decisions, but let's not pretend we're not trading some deaths for others.

That's fair, I agree.